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Eel Spearing at Setauket

More than any other artist, Mount brought genre painting to public attention and popularity in the third and fourth decades of the 19th century. Having studied the Old Master collection at the American Academy and taken classes at the National Academy of Design in New York City, Mount was well grounded in European artistic traditions. It is his chosen subject matter, the rural life of his hometown Setauket and Stony Brook, Long Island, which gives Mount a provincial-seeming character. As one of the earliest American genre painters, Mount’s technique and talent offered an important example for genre painters to come.
In Eel Spearing at Setauket, Mount combined personal experience and specific requests of a patron into one of the most acclaimed American genre paintings of the 19th century. The painting was commissioned by George W. Strong, whose Long Island boyhood was similar to Mount's in that slaves or family servants taught each of the boys to fish. The precision and clarity of Mount’s brushwork, the geometric perfection of his triangular composition, and the dignity and grace with which he invested his human subjects make Eel Spearing a painting that has few equals in American art.